5 Life Lessons from Lindsay Bluth In Honor Of Portia de Rossi’s Birthday

Portia de Rossi turns 40 today and what better way to celebrate than to look back at her best role, Lindsay Bluth Funke on Arrested Development. (Sorry Ally McBealfans!)

Lindsay was a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a sister and she was hilariously horrible at all of these. When she decided to have an open marriage with her very, very, very likely gay husband, Tobias Funke, she failed at seducing new men, including a caterer/bounty hunter named Ice. As mother to daughter Maeby Funke, she celebrated C-minus grades and once attempted to punish her by sending her to hang out with her own mother, Lucille Bluth.

An even worse mother than, Lindsay, Lucille constantly makes fun of her obviously very fit daughter for being fat and in one episode she doesn’t give Lindsay an elephant brooch because she doesn’t want to “invite the comparison”. As a sister, Lindsay also isn’t great and does things like take money from the family company to go shopping. But in the end she’s usually there for her brothers, especially Michael Bluth; although sometimes it’s in a creepy semi-incestuous way…

Portia kept us laughing whether she was attempting to cook, hosting an event for one of her many charitable causes… or simply getting drunk on an entire bottle of vodka.

Here’s some important life lessons from Lindsay Bluth Funke. Thanks for being so very wise!

1. Demand attention through your outfits. Lindsay is initially worried about visiting her father in prison, but when the inmates don’t pay enough attention to her she switches up her look and wears the slut shirt for the first time. It makes a couple more awesome appearances throughout the series.

2. Spice up your activism. In Lindsay’s case, this meant turning the cage in which she was protesting the Iraq war into a cage dancing cage. Also, only protest things that directly effect you. Like, your hairdresser being deployed.

3. Always wear proper workout gear. Even if you’re just doing Kegel exercises in the middle of the living room along to a video with an old lady. Or as Michael calls it, “a workout video for people as lazy as you are.”

4. Show off your domestic prowess. Try Lindsay’s recipe for soup, I mean, “hot ham water.” Just add a canned ham to a large pot of boiling water. Her brother Buster Bluth agrees: “So watery and yet there’s a smack of ham to it.”